But let’s get back to illusions for now… I found this one on The Instructables. There you can find some instructions how to DIY this illusion yourself. Basically, it involves four different shades of blue that border each other. When viewed from left to right, the shades go from lightest to darkest. The illusion comes into play when an object is placed along the borders of each successive shade. Something strange occurs with our perception of the obvious difference in shades – neighboring shades appear to be precisely the same! Jump inside this article, to see the original pattern.

Now remove those pesky pencils away from the bluish pattern. How many colors do you see? I can assure you that both patterns are exactly the same! There is a video on YouTube called “Shady Optical Illusion” that shows you the effect in reverse. Be sure to check it out!

The benefits of taking a broader approach to problem solving can be seen everywhere, even in something as seemingly arbitrary as games of chance, best casino games, or online gaming in general. I just wanted to reference back to our recent topic about gambling… Pause for a second and consider exactly what’s motivating you. Word of advice: if you’re trying to make extra money by playing online poker but failing, maybe being a successful poker player simply isn’t in the cards for you. Instead of abandoning the game and all you’ve learned, though, perhaps you can make your millions instead by writing a screenplay about poker (such as Rounders), or by getting a job as a programmer for an online poker site, if you have skills such as creative writing or computer programming. Instead of getting locked into thinking that there’s only one possible solution to your problem, step back and consider all the angles, and open yourself up to all the possibilities that might present themselves to you. Take care, and be responsible!

Check the animation below, or simply click this image

Here’s an interesting approach to original Lilac Chaser illusion, invented many years ago… Wait for the animation to load, and concentrate on the center dot for a minute or so. Normally the skulls are disappearing in a clock-wise direction, but if you manage to stay still and concentrated, you will experience an afterimage of the rotating skull in places (where there shouldn’t be any). Hope you understood all this babling.

Originally I got this optical illusion from here, and have to admit: I was forced to crop the above and below embedded letters. Sorry dear fellow webmaster, hope you don’t take it against me – it’s just that the letters were too big and spammy for the illusion to be useful anywhere elsewhere than on its original website.

Apart from all this, check our newest optical illusion below! If you stare at the fly sitting in the center of the yellow-blue pattern on the right for a minute or so, and then switch your view onto the fly on your left – you’ll experience one interesting effect! Normally the cow photo looks divided into two different colored surfaces, but if you follow the previously mentioned procedure correctly – the cow photo fill appear perfectly normal. Yes, its similar to our prehistoric colored baby and hydroplane illusions! Please don’t forget to comment how the widgets behave at your end!

Click To Expand The Solution!

It took Sara Watson three weeks to transform the car seen below, and make it invisible. She made a battered old Skoda “disappear” by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park. This invisible Skoda is now being used for advertising by the local recycling firm that donated the vehicle. Sara was given the Skoda Fabia from the breaker’s yard at local firm, whose owner Steve Jackson described her work as “simply amazing”. Are you able to see the car without any problem? Perhaps our color-blind readers will see it more quickly, as they are better at penetrating certain camouflages (supposedly). Oh, I almost forgot to share that I managed to pass my exam – just 8 more before getting a diploma!

If the numbers don’t jump out at you immediately, if you have hard time distinguishing the colors apart, or if you aren’t able to easily distinguish at least a vague guess as to what the number is, then you my friend are unfortunately – color blind.

A version of this test can be seen used in the film Little Miss Sunshine, in which a small girl is playing with the vision test chart with her brother. He is not able to see the numbers, or tell the different colors apart well enough to distinguish the numbers. The boy’s goal was to be a pilot, so when he is made aware that he’s colorblind, the poor kid has a small nervous breakdown. As we already stated, color blindness, or color vision deficiency, is the inability to perceive differences between some of the colors that others can distinguish. It is most often of genetic nature, but may also occur because of the eye, nerve, or brain damage, or due to exposure to certain chemicals.

Before we proceed onto our next example, here is a little history lesson: The English chemist John Dalton published the first scientific paper on the subject in 1798, “Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colors” after the realization of his own color blindness. Because of Dalton’s work, the condition is sometimes called daltonism, although this term is now used for a specific type of color blindness, called deuteranopia. Below you may see the example how one that is colorblind can’t distinguish the numbers on the card. Don’t be mistaken, color blind people don’t see everything in black and white, I just gave this as a guideline so you can understand their inability.

Color blindness is not the swapping of colors in the observer’s eyes. Grass is never red, and stop signs are never green. The color impaired do not learn to call red “green” and vice versa. However, dichromats often confuse red and green items. For example, they may find it difficult to distinguish a Braeburn from a Granny Smith and in some cases, the red and green of a traffic light without other clues (e.g., shape or location). This is demonstrated in this simulation of the two types of apple as viewed by a trichromat or by a dichromat.

In certain situations, color blindness is classed as a disability. However, color blind people have some advantages over people with normal color vision as well! There are some studies which conclude that color blind individuals are better at penetrating certain camouflages.

On your left, you may see another color vision test card. This one is pretty hard, as some individuals with perfect vision may have problems seeing the number inside it – it is 56 if I’m not mistaken.

Hope we learned something useful today. Before I conclude this article, there are some more vision test examples for you to enjoy:

And then some more… Examples below are much bigger in size. If you had no problem recognizing previous numbers, but have more problem distinguishing these, don’t be afraid – it has nothing to do with color blindness. Probably its just that your eyes can’t capture the whole image at once.

This post was written by Vurdlak, with additional help from Vernon Southward of Macro Photography. If you would like to have your article appear on Mighty Optical Illusions as well, feel free to contact us.